FAIR LAWN, N.J. (PIX11) – A convicted serial killer has confessed to a New Jersey murder that’s been a mystery since 1965, the Fair Lawn Police Department announced Tuesday.
Richard Cottingham, known as the “torso killer,” confessed to the murder of Alys Eberhardt, an 18-year-old nurse, police said.
Eberhardt was beaten to death in her family’s home on Saddle River Road in Fair Lawn in September 1965. In confessing, Cottingham provided new details about the case, police said.
Detective Brian Rypkema and Sgt. Eric Eleshewich told PIX11 News that they spent more than 50 hours speaking with Cottingham, who is in a medical unit at South Woods prison in New Jersey. Cottingham has said he killed more than 80 women before he was locked up in 1980.
Rypkema said Cottingham met Eberhardt outside Hackensack Hospital two weeks before he killed her.
Rypkema said Cottingham explained, “there was just something about her that drew his attention to her, that all the girls were talking to her, she carried herself well, and that’s why he picked her out of the group of girls.”
Sgt. Eleshewich said Cottingham “has said numerous times that he would never give his first murder, so chronically this is now his first murder, but I don’t believe this is his first.”
Historian and author Peter Vronsky has facilitated numerous confessions from Cottingham. Vronsky told PIX11 News, “He is in fragile health. He understands what remorse is, and he understands that he should feel remorseful.”
Eberhardt’s family said the confession is a huge moment to honor the young woman’s memory.
“Our family has waited since 1965 for the truth. To receive this news during the holidays — and to be able to tell my mother, Alys’s sister, that we finally have answers — was a moment I never thought would come,” said Michael Smith, Eberhardt’s nephew.
Cottingham has been tied to many murders in New York and New Jersey. Most recently, in 2022, the “torso killer” was linked to five murders on Long Island in the 1960s and ’70s. The name comes from killings in Times Square in 1979 that inspired a docuseries titled “Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer.”